


Home Cooking

by leiascully



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-12
Updated: 2007-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:19:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Dinner and a quickie?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Cooking

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Post-S3  
> A/N: Thanks to Zulu for beta work and support! This is for [**vitawash24**](http://vitawash24.livejournal.com/), who wanted to see Cuddy in the grocery store so long ago.  
> Disclaimer: _House M.D._ and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, and Fox. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

Cuddy browses along the aisles of the supermarket, her eyes skidding over the rounded shapes of fruits and vegetables and the squat bags of flour and salt. Nothing tempts her. Her feet are sore and she hasn't got the energy to bake or sauté. It'll be another night of salad, a tomato sliced over bagged lettuce and some microwaved chicken on top. She grabs a few things and slings them into her cart: skim milk for her coffee, mint tea for the evenings, some pre-washed, premixed greens, and a tube of toothpaste. The shopping choices of a lonely woman, she thinks, and goes to the self-checkout to avoid the eyes of the cashiers, who are all half her age and married with children.

She lets her mind slide during the drive, listening to an old jazz cd she thinks House left in her office. The trees along the street are all leafed out, an eerie green under the streetlights. She can't remember the last time she got home before dark. She pushes a hand into her hair as the car purrs along her street. There's a massage in her future, as soon as she can find a free hour. She yawns, turns the wheel, and pulls smoothly into her driveway, then brakes abruptly to avoid the motorcycle parked at an arrogant skew.

_God_, she thinks, slumping into her seat, _the last thing I want to deal with tonight_. She hefts her one bag of groceries, slips out of the car. There's a light on in the house that she knows she didn't leave when she left in the morning. House must be hard at work disrupting her life. It was his day off: who knows how long he's been here? She goes in through the garage: the door opens directly into the lighted kitchen. She has threats and admonishments on the tip of her tongue, _get out_ and _what the hell are you doing here?_ and _House, do you know how easy it would be to fire you?_, but as the door swings open, she's hit with a sauna-thick fog of cooking aromas and steamy heat, and all the words get swallowed. House doesn't even look up from his slicing and dicing.

"I hope you like Thai," he says.

"I do." She puts the milk and the lettuce away. Her fridge is full of produce and a six-pack of Brahma beer. She pries the cap off one cold bottle and sits on a stool in the corner of her kitchen, afraid that if she blinks, he'll disappear, and she'll be down one dinner. The air is full of tropical aromas: coconut and cinnamon and citrus and pepper and the starchy smell of rice. "House, what are you doing here?"

"Cooking dinner."

She nods, her lips pressed together. "So...angling for some kind of special permission for some outrageous procedure? Or just lonely, now that all your fellows have left and you've got to schlep downstairs if you want to torment someone."

He turns and looks at her. "Cuddy, you wound me. What about the basic goodness of the human heart?"

She snorts and sips at her beer. He grins.

"Anyway, I don't have to go all the way downstairs. Wilson's right there. I just like your kitchen."

"Your kitchen's better," she says.

"Too big. No point in cooking for one."

"Is this some kind of culinary apology?" she asks, tipping the bottle to her lips. "Because I'd say you owe me."

"Consider my debt paid," he says, scraping chicken from the cutting board into a simmering pot of something. "I hope you like spicy food."

She touches the back of her hand to her forehead. "Have I died? Is this some kind of bizarre fever dream? What did you do with Greg House?"

"If I'm the afterlife, we're all in trouble." He rinses his hands and picks something up from the counter, then hobbles over and presses it between her lips. "This will wake you up."

She bites down automatically, wary of him but startled into compliance by the intimacy of the gesture, and her mouth is flooded with the hot sweetness of ginger. Her mouth opens and she breathes quickly against the stinging of lips and tongue, and he's grinning again. She glares at him and swigs the beer, the carbonation prickling her already sensitive mouth. He's back at the stove, stirring his mysterious pots, and she kicks off her shoes and watches him. She's got a pleasant three-quarter view of him - despite his advancing years and his limited mobility, he's got the same beautiful frame and more muscles than is strictly fair. He is deft, clearly knows what he's doing. He reaches into her fridge for a couple of fat zucchini, hardly even looking, and she wonders if he's rearranged the rest of her house. Who knows how long he's been here? Long enough to fit himself into the furnishings: he looks as if she ought to be used to him being around, with the familiar way he opens drawers and cupboards.

Her countertops are littered with mysterious cans missing their labels and half-empty packets of who-knows-what. House shuffles through them with practiced ease. He puts vegetables into one pot, stirs another, opens the lid of a third to a waft of hot peppery steam. He looks into this pot with a satisfied expression and reaches for a ladle, dipping liquid into a bowl and bringing it to her.

"Here," he says. "Start off on that." Her silverware drawer rattles open and he checks it with one hip and drops two spoons and a fork on the kitchen island before getting another bowl for himself. She dips her spoon tentatively into the soup: a clear broth with cauliflower and carrots floating in it, and pale green ribbons of cabbage. It's too hot and burns her tongue even though she blows on the liquid until it threatens to fling itself across the counter, but it's good. Surprisingly good. Light and clean with a strong taste of black pepper. The vegetables are tender and perfect.

"I didn't know you could cook," she says, blowing on a second mouthful.

"A man has to have some secrets," he says, playing the brooding artist for a moment. Maybe it's the beer or the sweet relief of not having to cook for herself, but she's enjoying this. Clearly he is too. Her stomach suddenly seems terribly empty and she sips down the soup as fast as she can. Her cheeks are lightly flushed from the alcohol and the heat of the broth. She flexes her feet under the rungs of the stool just for the sensual pleasure of it, the small muscles and bones moving together and against each other. House has half a smile on his face as he watches her from under his eyebrows. She brings her bowl to her lips to drink the last of the soup, flirting her eyes at him over the rim.

"Really, House, why are you here?"

"Got bored," he says. "Day off. No patients. I've got to keep you guessing."

"This isn't some secret plan to give me food poisoning?"

"Damn," he says, "you've cracked my code. Actually, the plan was that I get food poisoning, and you get to hold my hair back all night as I yark in your pretty purple bathroom."

"Sometimes I forget you're a human being," she says by way of apology, and he huffs a quick laugh and moves to the stove to stir the simmering pot. He bends to taste something from the spoon, sprinkles something, stirs again, tastes, and pronounces it done, whatever it is. He flips the lid off the pot on the back burner and turns a fluffy mound of rice onto a plate before drenching the rice with whatever it is - a curry, she thinks - from the first pot. He sets the plate in front of her. "Bon appetit."

It's a lot of food. A lot more than she usually eats, anyway. It looks suspicious: a faintly greenish sauce with the lumps of chicken and vegetables, zucchini and asparagus and what she hopes are bamboo shoots. But it smells good, and as House clumps back over with his own plateful, she lifts a tentative forkful to her mouth. It's delicious. The sauce is creamy and coconutty and spicy enough to make the insides of her cheeks tingle. When she swallows, she can feel the warmth of it moving down through her chest like a how-to diagram of the digestive system. A sip of beer cools her mouth and the bubbles bite at the sides of her tongue.

"Mmmm," she says. "House. Wow."

He pulls out a pair of chopsticks and maneuvers a bite of curry to his mouth, looking inordinately pleased with himself. She forks up another bite, chewing slowly, swallowing slowly. The whole meal feels decadent, almost like a vacation. She takes a long pull of her beer. God, she needed this and she didn't even know it. She looks sidelong at House, wondering what else he knows about her that she doesn't know. Maybe plenty. They eat at a leisurely pace. She watches him licking curry from his thin lips and the jolt of his Adam's apple as he tilts back his head to drink his own beer. At last she pushes back her empty plate, wiping her mouth on a napkin. Her stomach feels pleasantly taut. Her skin is warm and tingly. Her mouth burns with the accumulation of chilis. She knows her eyes are glowing as she looks at him.

"Dessert?" he suggests.

"Not sure I can," she says, putting a hand on her stomach.

"Don't give me that," he says. "I remember you and the cereal eating contest."

"That was a long time ago!" she protests. "That was college. I was younger then, and foolish. I had a metabolism."

"You had to win a bet," he says. "Come on, Cuddy. I slaved over a hot stove."

"What is it?"

"Ice cream. And fruit. Something a little healthy for you."

"Ice cream?" She arches one brow.

"I didn't say I spent all day slaving." He swings open the freezer door and puts a small container of green tea ice cream on the table between them, then pulls a couple of mangoes out of the fridge and finds a sharp knife in a drawer. "They do say that the best way to eat a mango is naked over the sink."

"If you can get into the sink, I'll be impressed," she drawls. This is sliding quickly into outrageous flirting, but she doesn't mind at all somehow. This minor miracle of dinner after a long day has mellowed her. He peels the mango, leaving long strips of skin on his empty plate, and slices a chunk of yellow-orange flesh from the fruit, holding it out to her. When she tries to take it with her fingers, he moves it out of reach, and then moves it close to her mouth. After a moment, she parts her lips and takes it, his thumb brushing her lower lip. He feeds her piece after piece, his hungry eyes on her mouth. She spoons up some of the ice cream between bites of mango and puts the spoon alternately between his teeth and hers. He licks his lips. His eyes are searingly blue. She pushes up on the stool, leans across the island, grabs a fistful of his shirt, and kisses him.

He kisses back. His mouth is spicy and his teeth are sharp and she almost overbalances on the stool trying to push harder against him. His sticky hand comes up around the back of her neck. His stubble burns her chin. She wants more and more, but the edge of the kitchen island is pushing into her abdomen, and she's about to fall into the plates with their remnants of coconut curry.

"Couch?" she says.

"For future reference, this is exactly the kind of thanks I appreciate most," he says, and limps into the living room. She pushes him gently down and straddles his lap, her skirt tight around her thighs as he pushes it up, her hands undoing his shirt buttons as fast as possible. She dips her head to taste the base of his throat: salty, with a faint steamy smell of coconut and coriander. She puts her tongue in his suprasternal notch and swirls the tip. He runs his hands down her back and clutches her ass, and she growls. Reluctantly she steps back, her feet on the floor, and strips off her panties and skirt, dragging her blouse off and tossing it onto the corner of the couch. House unbuttons his jeans and shoves them down, his cock upright and quivering. She kneels briefly to lick at his head and he hisses.

"Chilis," he says.

"Right." She straddles him again, peeling him out of his shirt, pressing her breast between his lips. He takes her nipple gladly, caressing her other breast and her flank, his fingers wandering down between her thighs.

"You know, Cuddy, anytime you need to take the edge off..." he says suggestively into her chest, and she lowers herself onto him, kissing him to shut his mouth. She rocks her hips into his and his fingers tighten on her breast and side.

"Nobody's keeping your calendar now that Cameron's gone," she says, her teeth grazing his ear. He huffs a laugh and then groans as she tightens her muscles deliberately around him. His hands move across her skin. She tucks her face against his neck, her nipples rubbing his chest.

It's all over surprisingly fast. After a few minutes, he groans again, his thighs tensing under hers, and slumps into her shoulder.

"Sorry," he says.

"It's fine," she says. Oddly enough it is, for now. She's riding an endorphin high, rapt at the unaccustomed feel of him in her, still pleased by the tingle of her mouth and the warmth of her belly. "You can make up for it another time."

He grins very slowly. "Dinner and a quickie?"

"You're not the only genius," she tells him, and kisses him again.


End file.
